As the ETF universe continues to expand, more and more issuers are digging deeper into the existing categories, trying to once again carve out their own niche market. From a historical perspective in the ETF universe, small cap stocks have exhibited favorable return profiles relative to their large cap counterparts and because their operations are relatively risky, investors expect to receive additional returns over the long run to compensate for additional volatility. Small cap growth funds focus on this risk and could spell disaster in the wrong hands, or huge returns in the right ones [see Visual History Of The S&P 500].

Last year was a good year for most asset classes, as investor portfolios continued to recover from the recent recession. The difference in performance between many comparable funds was significant, and many of the best performers of 2010 are relatively small funds that maintain considerably smaller asset bases than their more popular competitors. Below, we profiled the top performing ETFs in more than 60 ETFdb Categories covering all major asset classes. ETFs that launched in 2010 were excluded, as were those that stopped trading during the year [for more ETF insights, sign up for our free ETF newsletter]: [click to continue…]

As the ETF industry has exploded on to the scene in recent years, sponsors have aggressively launched funds in an attempt to gain market share. While many of these new ETFs have attracted sufficient investor funds to justify continued operation, some have failed to garner a level of investment necessary to support an active, liquid market […]

In April of this year, Barclays announced that it had agreed to sell its iShares line of ETFs to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for $4.4 billion. So why all the speculation lately that BlackRock and other banks are in the running to acquire the fund family? As part of its deal with CVC, Barclays […]